


For the (Strange, Wonderful) Birds

by Nyah



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 08:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10715670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyah/pseuds/Nyah
Summary: He's like a character forgotten offstage too long. But once he was the spotlight.





	For the (Strange, Wonderful) Birds

p>The first thing you learn about Oliver Bird is he loves stories. No, that’s not quite right. He respects stories.

He loves the ocean.

But one tells the story of the other. And so it goes….

But I digress.

When you met, it went like this: The room is low and smokey, music curling around your ankles, so thick with soul you can almost see the notes coiling together in the haze, flashing with bright pops of sound then the long fade into the susurrus. The crowd is skinny kids in black flanking the perimeter like set pieces.

In the center there’s Oliver, texturing words for a girl with pin straight hair. His fingertips rest on the naked small of her back. “I used to think I wanted to go to space but then I swam an inverted aurora across the breast of the south China sea and my thirst for the stars was slaked.”

His voice is a spotlight. The words tumble like meteors out of the smokey high notes of The Blues coating the ceiling. They blaze in blues and greens, letters of a beat poem swirling about like falling stars that changed their minds.

The girl sighs like it’s scripted. She melts into his loose embrace.

That’s Oliver, that’s his gift. His stories come alive sometimes. Or maybe it’s his audience that comes alive, who see reality shift and rollover and swoon.

The way the girl with the pin straight hair leans and fawns is nothing new. It’s every story, every poem, every room. But the letters raining down like the secret language of god….

He twirls the girl with one arm and a, “Cheers.” He gazes into his cup, wondering if it was the acid or the mushrooms. When he looks up, he knows it was you.

You? You’re juggling three marriage proposals and a secret college enrollment your daddy thinks is candy striping. You’re in debt to reality by three days of sleep, a fat swig of moonshine, and a toke of something or other. But you’re ahead by all the dazzle of 17 with a genius IQ in your back pocket and a failsafe laugh like the doors of a fairy kingdom opening for the last time.

He looks up and says, “It will be a true tale. But far, far stranger than any I have loved before.”

You’ve heard this line, or something very nearly like it but you’ve never seen the air come alive with words around you. “What will?”

“Our life.”


End file.
